Why I love Adelaide: Jason Chong

If you've been to the OzAsia Festival and the Fringe a lot in the past, there's no doubt you're seen Jason Chong on stage at both events. The South Australian comic who along with doing stand-up and hosting has also regularly featured on Adelaide radio, will be the MC at the Lucky Dumpling Markets this OzAsia, as well as appearing in the Special Comedy Comedy Special. He’s finishing up OzAsia Festival 2021 with a team captain role in the Closing Night Debate of new writing and ideas program In Other Words.

I was born and grew up in Adelaide, I was born in Ashford hospital and grew up in Hallett Cove and Brighton, but as soon as I got out of home I started moving into the city. My wife and I now live in Prospect, but we lived in North Adelaide for a while. My wife works at the Women's and Children's, so we found a place that was a eight minute walk to work, which was great and then we found a place that was four minutes round trip to work so that was even better. The last almost 10 years have been in North Adelaide so it's been great. Now, living close to the city is great because I get to walk to gigs and in and out of the city which is good because I'm getting older and fatter. So any walking is good. But on the other side, there's a lot of great places to eat – late night cafes and 24 hour bakeries, so that's not helping. It’s a constant battle between me walking into the city and getting food. I mean even now, I'm in the city and I'm probably going to go to the bakery on the way home.

I grew up with divorced parents so I spent my weekdays with my mum who is Australian and weekends with my dad who's from Singapore. And on weekends we'd hang out with his friends and they all had kids that were about my age, so my weekends growing up were amazing and full of dinner parties where the kids would be running around the backyard and playing video games and the parents would all be cracking peanuts and eating and the food would be amazing. And I guess when all the kids got older and the parents got busier all that stopped and we're not so tight anymore. And I've missed out on that part of my life since growing up. But OzAsia is amazing because it kind of feels like that again. It feels like my childhood growing up with all these smells and sights and kids running around and everyone having a good time. That personally has been really comforting. It's really nice, it really reminds me of happy times.

Being at the Lucky Dumpling Markets, often have acts that do a spot on the stage there, and that's really great. I've seen some amazing things often musical acts, from traditional right through to really contemporary stuff. And there's a thing called the immigrant time warp or something similar where when someone comes from another country, their impression of what that country is stops when they leave. And so, while the country moves on, what you get taught as a second generation immigrant is Singapore from the 60s. And so, my impression of Singapore is quite outdated, and apparently when those people go back to their countries and talk to people, they talk like they're from that period. So it's really outdated and people from from Singapore, speak to my dad and go, 'why are you so retro?' And so seeing the acts OzAsia brings out and seeing them really contemporary, it blows my mind. Because that's not the Asia that I was led to believe existed. So I love being introduced to new things and I feel like being at the Lucky Dumpling Markets is a great way to experience a bit of everything. I'm also really keen for the Pinoy Street Party which is in Adelaide for the first time. A Filipino event for the whole family, it'll have singers, dancers, food and plenty of fun stuff.

I have really been enjoying board game cafes in the last couple of years. There's one in the city called The Lost Dice, that's on King William Street, and that's great. I had my birthday there with my friends, I forced them all to play board games with me. And there was one like way back in the day, called The Hungry Hippo, which was a Renew Adelaide project but that was great. I had a friend buck show there I made him go there, and we had a great time. So yes, I think I'm a board game nerd. And now, we go there and you decide to pick the thing off the shelf and play it and see if you like it, and then we end up at the table, buying it online. And yeah, so now my house is looking a bit like a board game cafe.

I'm always impressed when I go to the Flying Fig because there's a Reuben sandwich and I don't know why, I think it's just a Seinfeld reference or something that, but just whenever I see a Reuben sandwich, I have to have one. They make their own pastrami and  they smoke their own stuff and their sandwiches are great.

Because I'm a comedian, my dinner time is often early or really late. And if it's really late, it's the Bakery On O’Connell. I should own shares in that place, I reckon I've put the owners kids through private school. The chili cheese kransky is my go to savory. And my go to sweet is the sticky date cupcake, it has the perfect cake to cream to drizzle ratio. I'm not a massive sticky date pudding person but this sticky date cupcake has got it going on.

My favourite bar would have to be the Rhino Room, which is a comedy club. They also do live music there as well and they often give me free drinks because I'm performing so that's good. They’ve got a downstairs now, called Lowlife Basement Bar, that's like a really nice space as well. It's a good spot for comedy.

Adelaide is a place where you can have a place that you love, really close to the city, and if I was in Melbourne and Sydney. I need to be a multimillionaire to have that lifestyle and I am not a multi-millionaire. I'm like, almost a hundredaire. So to be able to have that have a backyard for the dog to run in, I don't know where else you can get that, but still I can walk to Adelaide Oval in half an hour and I've got everything that I need here.

I am a Crows fan and my wife is a Port fan. So we had to get an Adelaide Oval membership, which means you get to go to every Adelaide Oval game. And so, one of us is miserable, every single game.

Usually as an Asian comic you're the only Asian on the lineup, and so that this even exists has blown my mind. The two different lineups are both like, super strong. The lineup as it is now is like Jen Wong from Sydney who is, who was on Celebrity Letters and Numbers. And then Dilruk Jayasinha who has just finished Celebrity Masterchef. He used to be like a bigger version of me. We used to joke that we would like babushka dolls of each other, and I was the doll inside of him. But now he got like hot and skinny. And it's quite inspirational, maybe I could be hot and skinny, I don't know. I’m super excited to show Adelaide, these amazing local comics. Kehau Jackson is a 70 year old Hawaiian-Chinese woman. And while most 70 year old Hawaiian people should be sitting on a beach drinking out of a coconut, she's a tornado of comedy and one of the funniest people I know. Nicholas Hundley is another comic who I really really love. He's kind of like me, he's like a second generation immigrant, but is really, really funny. The Coconuts are two Adelaide girls who are musical duo. And then The Golden Phung is a sketch group, and this is this is my point about being the only Asian on the lineup, its Roy Phung who's a Vietnamese Australian and a white guy Eddie Morrison – I really want to find out what it's like being the token whitey in a show. It's a really diverse and great lineup so I'm very excited to be on it.

Earlier this year we did Students' Got Talent. Because so many International students couldn't go home to their families, the Festival Centre and the Adelaide City Council put on events for these people who were isolated in a really stressful time for the world and it was a really cool thing that they did. They put on a talent show and had open auditions where anyone could come and then put on this really great event at Her Majesty's. It was really cool and again it was great to see some people doing like really traditional art forms and then some people just belting out Frozen hits and being awesome, it was so much fun. 

I do it for the drink cards, you don't get paid much, but they'll always give you a drink [laughs]. No, I think I was always a bit of a smartass at school, and I wouldn't recommend that, but I feel like this was a foregone conclusion at some point. I've always been able to make people laugh but usually it's been to the disruption of whatever else is going on, and comedy is a place where I can do it and it's actually helping. I think everyone deserves a giggle. And life is tough and it's really nice to just be able to let people have a laugh and connect with random people.